


The First Bloom on the Gentle Summer Wind

by slytherinbitch



Category: Naruto
Genre: Character Study, Death, Destruction, F/M, FYI Naruto is Genderqueer!, Female Character of Color, Gen, Hinata is demisexual!, Hyuuga Clan, Konoha - Freeform, Konoha Crush, Konohagakure - Freeform, Kuniochi, Ninja, POV Queer Characters, POV Woman of Color, character developement, lgbtqa+
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-01
Updated: 2017-08-01
Packaged: 2018-12-09 16:18:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,368
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11672676
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/slytherinbitch/pseuds/slytherinbitch
Summary: People forget: kindness is not a weakness.





	The First Bloom on the Gentle Summer Wind

 

People forget:  kindness is not a weakness.

  
All her life, Hinata was never enough.  Not smart enough, composed enough, fast enough, strong enough, and didn’t Hinata know?  Hinata was the heir, the firstborn, scion of the Hyuuga; and there could be no weakness in her heart or her mind or her body.  No emotion could reside in her bones, no friendship could flow through her veins, no love could nestle inside her, for Hinata was made, solely, to be a weapon of war, a tool of destruction, a puppet for her elders, and a broodmare for her bloodline, all for the good of her clan.  And didn’t Hinata know?  She must be the Yamato Nadeshiko, and never anything else.  Certainly, Hinata was not allowed to be a girl or a person.  Hinata was to be the pinnacle of her clan's superiority, and she was not allowed to be human.  

  
People forget:  there is strength in soft, kind things.

  
Naruto, more than anything, beyond kindness and gentleness and love, was freedom to her.  Naruto was hated, spit upon, despised, and ignored by all those who should help him, but still, he lived as he wished, and he let no amount of disapproval or abuse stop him from doing anything he pleased.  Naruto laughed and he cried and fought and lived, utterly free in every thoughtless thought and action and proclamation.  Naruto was inspiration to her, a wish held close to her heart, an idea, pushed down and ignored and conversely obsessed over and guarded jealously.  Naruto, was _always, always, always_ , a shining bright light, a star, a supernova, a blinding bursting beautiful temptation.  Naruto was a spark she held within her chest, _waiting, waiting, waiting_ , always waiting for just the right time to ignite.

  
People forget:  emotion is not a shameful secretive thing.

  
Hinata loved calligraphy.  Flower arranging, art, music, festivals, braiding her hair, dango, sashimi, (ramen too, but only because it reminded her of Naruto), and birds.  Hinata loved running, traversing the forest of death, sparring, poison, working at the hospital, going on missions, spying on her clanmates, envisioning gory ways to kill people, learning genjutsu from Kurenai-sensei, and (furtively) learning other styles besides the gentle fist.  Hinata liked to laugh and love and find serenity within herself, Hinata liked to cry and hate and rage at everything and everyone.  Hinata loved life, and she loved to live more than she loved anything else she had ever seen or done.  Hinata was a person.  Not a tool or a doll or a paper cutout.  Not a soldier or a weapon or a thing.  She was a person, and Hinata lived like one, no matter how hard it was.  

  
People forget:  passion is not lesser when it is not screamed out to the heavens.

  
Hinata was quiet yes, reserved in action and manner, too timid by far, and it was not, as some might presume, a mask or a facade or a baby-bird game.  This was simply who she was.  Hinata had a stutter, hated public speaking, used her smallness as a defense against sneers and hurts and expectations, and more often than not faded into the background.  This was not an act.  Hinata was all of these things.  It is not a mistake to be these things.  Or to show them to the world so honestly, so recklessly.  Hinata was not defective.  It’s other people's mistake to think that that is so, not hers for being herself.  It’s other people's mistake to think that just because that’s all she showed them, that that was all she was.

  
People forget:  it’s not easy to rail against thousands of years of tradition.

  
Hitomi Hyuuga died before her daughter's sixth birthday.  She would never see her children grow up and grow old.  She would never be there for their joys or their struggles.  Hitomi Hyuuga died and left a gaping hole in her place; a void which sucking in all light and love and caring that might have once existed within her household.  Hitomi Hyuuga died and behind her, she left a father that would never touch his children, or speak with them in anything in the most formal of tones, as befitting a clan head and his heirs.  She left a coldness that permitted the entire landscape of the world, a whole in reality which tainted what was once happy, and seeped into the lives of those she loved most.  In some ways, Hinata was lucky, for she at least had some vague memories of her mother.  Sunlight in the gardens and hummed chants as her hair was brushed and styled, days spent learning to hold a calligraphy brush, simple katas for the mornings when they rose with the sun.  Love.  Warmth.  Happiness.  Life.  Hanabi had none of this, and she was lesser for it.  Hard and sharp and so much like their father she ached.  She had no whispered words of love, or homemade lunches, or laughter in the moonlight.  She had no comfort to hold close in the night.  She knew only pain and blood and the _push push push_ of her elders had only the knowledge that she may not ever have these things.  She had no hope.  No concept of it.  No thought to be free of their suffocating chains.  And it was the saddest thing Hinata had ever seen.  

  
People forget:  you should never set yourself on fire to keep others warm.

  
Neji hated her she knew.  For Hinata’s weakness, and her father's selfishness, and her uncle's selflessness.  He hated that he would never be allowed to learn the main houses jutsu, that her father used the caged bird seal on him whenever he acted ‘unbefitting of his station’, that she, who was lesser than him, was considered greater by some accident of birth _(because her father was born first)_.  He hated that he lived such a shallow existence, that he could not be what his clan demanded of him, that his clan would not let him be what his spirit demanded of himself, that she, who had such opportunity, could not grasp it.  He didn’t understand that she was caged just as surely as he.  That a gilded perch was still a perch and that clips of pearl would still weigh down wings, make them too heavy to fly.  He didn’t understand why she could be kind to him, why she was kind to him when confronted with their families expectations and his own abuses.  He didn’t understand, and that was the saddest thing about it.  

  
People forget: strength is found not in arms, but in will.

  
Hinata fought against Pein, held the line, struck down Naruto's chains, not because she loved him, not because she was unafraid, not because it was her duty, but because she wanted to.  She looked inside herself and measured her will, to move, to change, to rebel, to fight, and found that it far out measured her cunning and her ingenuity and her guile.  She could have run, she could have survived, but she looked at Pein, slowly, surely moving onto Naruto, pinned down like a rat caught in a trap, some vermin, some pest, not even worth striking down on his own two feet and was filled with wrath.  She looked around, looked at the bodies of civilians, crushed, bleeding out, dead, looked at her comrades, at her superior officers, at the children he had killed, and found she could not look away.  Hinata fought Pein, and she died for it.  Hinata did, not ‘Woman’ not ‘Hyuuga’ not ‘Kunoichi’ not ‘Heir’ HINATA. Don’t you dare diminish that.  It was her choice.  Made when her choices were so surely few.  It was her choice and she died for it. And she saved the world for it.

  
People forget:  you only need a spark to make a wildfire.

  
As Hinata gazed out over the crater that was her home, watching the sunrise paint the sky in its beautiful shades of pink and orange and gold and purple, she smiled, and she laughed.  She was alive.  She was free.  She was a person.  It was a new dawn and a new day, and it was time for things to change.

 


End file.
